Even as the debate on the overseas auction of Chandigarh’s heritage, particularly items associated with its creator Le Corbusier, rages on, the UT Administration says it has no official heritage list.

A committee formed by the administration under its chief architect to check the items reportedly related to Corbusier in the backdrop of the February 16 auction of sketches and drawings on him by the Paris-based auction house Artcurial has failed to submit its report. This is despite the fact that Chandigarh has been making a bid to be on UNESCO’s world heritage list.

Confirming that the report is yet to be submitted, Finance-cum-Urban Planning Secretary Sanjay Kumar promised that it would be submitted soon.

There seems to be confusion on what constitutes city’s “heritage” given the fact that most buildings, maps and artefacts of Chandigarh did not fulfil the mandatory 100-year existence for qualifying as heritage. “Since Chandigarh is the first planned city of the 20th century, it certainly qualifies as modern heritage,” says Dr SS Bhatti, a former principal of the Chandigarh College of Architecture.

“With the exception of buildings and the city as a manifestation of Le Corbusier’s master plan, everything belongs to the movable heritage, including items of furniture which are erroneously regarded as designed by Corbusier.”

Pierre Jeanneret, Corbusier’s cousin, in his capacity as the chief architect and chief town planning adviser to the Government of Punjab, designed the bulk of city sectors and its architecture, besides furniture and murals,” he added.

While no serious effort has been made to document Chandigarh’s heritage, “half-baked” information published in a section of the press about the recent auction of Corbusier’s furniture by London’s Saatchi art gallery was giving a wrong impression about what constituted city’s heritage.

“The outcry about Chandigarh’s heritage being auctioned abroad is absurd. Broken furniture or moulds for bas-relief sculptures or any other item must have found its way to auction houses abroad when it was disposed of unwittingly by the bureaucracy and it certainly cannot be classified as city’s heritage,” Dr Bhatti stated.

Preserving heritageExperts say that a committee, preferably comprising non-bureaucrats, should be constituted to lay down guidelines on what constitutes Chandigarh’s heritage. Besides, the Government Museum, City Museum and Le Corbusier Centre must be headed by professionals. A monitoring authority should be put in place to protect, preserve, conserve, and extend Chandigarh’s heritage.

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